All that night the storm raged, and did not lessen until one hundred ships had been dashed against the rocks or had sunk beneath the waves. Not satisfied with the ships alone, the gods broke the bodies of the men into pieces, turning the sea red and the cliffs into the anvil on which Thor’s hammer might wreak his fury.
But beneath their foundering ships, the sea goddess Rán spread her net and gathered them to her, every man. Never in one day had her watery realm been so well served.
To this day those cliffs are called in the Saxon tongue Anfilt Thuna, that is to say the anvil of Thor. It is said that when the wind is strong in the West the lost army, denied both Valhalla and Niflheim, yet call for their sword-brothers.
I: GEORGE
George had watched Draca through her binoculars all the way down the harbour, until they were lost to sight where the channel curved round an island. Already the wind was making it difficult to hold her hands steady, and when she lowered her arms, drops of rain drove into her face hard enough to sting.
To keep herself busy, George tidied up the storeroom. She remembered Jack’s locker hanging open and his sword spilling out onto the floor; just the sort of thing that goes missing. Jack had packed his locker so full that as soon as she pushed stuff in, more fell out. Clothes. A photograph of Jack and a bunch of marines in desert combat gear, all cradling rifles. Books. Her phone rang as she was pushing the locker door closed.
‘Hey, Charl.’ There had been days when George had been excited if Charlotte called. Today wasn’t one of them, and her voice must have sounded flat.
‘George, darling, something wrong?’
‘Jack. He’s gone sailing with his father.’
‘Isn’t it a bit windy? It’s blowing a gale here. There’s a tree down on the way into town.’
The locker door swung open again. More clothes and a small, flat, leather box fell out.
‘Charl, I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment…’ George wedged the phone into her shoulder and bent to pick up the box, which had sprung open as it fell. Jack’s Military Cross hung half out of it, shiny and smart on its purple and white ribbon.
‘Actually, I’m ringing about Jack.’
‘Uh-huh?’ George was cautious.
‘Something you said the other day, about him being obsessed with Draca and behaving like Old Eddie before he trashed it.’
‘S’right.’ George pushed the medal back into its box, where it clicked against a deformed bullet wedged into the lining. She managed to hold the locker door closed with her knee while she snapped the padlock in place.
‘Eddie left Jack a strange letter, asking him to sink Draca off Anfel Head. “Draca will know where”, I think it said. “It’s where she wants to be.” When I read it, I thought what a peculiar notion, as if a boat could think, but I thought you might want to ask Jack… George? George?’
But George was running for the marina office. It all made terrible sense.
Chippy sat at the desk, very upright to protect his back.
‘Where’s the fire, girl?’
George ignored him. On the wall behind the desk hung a row of boat keys and she looked along the line, mentally discounting each one. Too small. Too big to sail solo. Workboat, useless offshore. Rain spattered against the window behind her, hard enough in the gusts to rattle the glass.
Think again. Workboat. Big, powerful engine. Might catch them up. She reached over Chippy’s shoulders and grabbed the keys from the rack.
‘I’m going out, Chippy. Watch the fort for me?’
‘You’re not thinking of taking the workboat out of the harbour, are you?’
‘Just down to the harbour mouth. Have a look outside, maybe.’
‘‘Cos she’s worse than useless at sea, less’n it’s flat calm.’
George knew that. The workboat was flat bottomed, designed with a shallow draught for work in inshore waters.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about today, Chippy.’
‘Jack’s old enough to look after himself, and you can’t do nothing in the workboat. Any decent sea will turn her over.’
George gripped the keys more tightly, and opened the door. Rain spotted the floor around the mat.
‘That boat ain’t yours to wreck, girl.’
She pulled the door closed behind her, thinking that this was one of the dumbest things she’d ever done. Out at sea, in any serious weather, the workboat would be as seaworthy as a tea tray.
Of course, the workboat felt rock solid going down the harbour. It’s what she was built for: speed in protected waters. There was a deckhouse to keep the rain off, wipers to clear the forward windows and even a chair bolted to the deck behind the controls. If she’d obeyed the harbour speed limit, it would have been as exciting as driving a truck down a motorway.
Except she didn’t. Obey the speed limit, that is. All the way out, she braced herself for angry shouts on the VHF, shouts that she’d have to sweet-talk away. But then the harbour master was probably making himself a nice cup of tea and staying out of the wet. Anyway, she’d just take a look outside. If George could see Draca in the bay, and all seemed well, she’d go back in again.
VHF. She might be able to talk Jack into coming back.
At first, George thought she could handle it. The sea out in the bay was rough, but she kept the waves fine on the bow, crabbing sideways away from the land in an uncomfortable, corkscrew motion. Speed was impossible. She flew off the top of one wave and smacked the water so hard with the underside of that flat hull that the noise was a thunderclap and the workboat shook to the blow. It wasn’t built to take punishment like that and George throttled back so they rolled over the waves rather than jumping off them. If she focused too much on looking for Draca, she risked letting a larger wave catch her by surprise. Then the workboat would slew around and roll so that loose gear tumbled over the deck, and her binoculars would swing far enough out from her neck to crack against the deckhouse side window. The little boat had no proper keel, and no ballast, so it would turn over if it was tipped it far enough, and that would be dead easy in waves like these. After a couple of scares, George ignored the binoculars and relied on her eyeballs, searching an empty and wildly gyrating sea, wishing the boat had radar.
Soon the looming bulk of Anfel Head was the only solid feature in view. The lower-lying land behind it faded into the murk of rain and spray. George picked up the VHF microphone.
‘Yacht Draca, yacht Draca, this is Furzey Marina workboat, Furzey Marina workboat. Come in please. Over.’
There was nothing but the crackle of static. The workboat’s blunt, almost square bow cut into a wave on one side and spooned enough water inboard for it to come rushing aft as she lifted, breaking into spray against the deckhouse. The seas were getting worse as she neared Anfel Head and began to lose the shelter of the land. This was stupid. Already George could see around the headland to the beginnings of The Race, and she wouldn’t stand a chance in that. Wind over tide, the sailor’s nightmare. Strong wind from the west pushing against a high ‘spring’ tide going the other way, and making a nightmare of waves in the middle. George repeated the call, staring at a sea that was more white than grey, until a wave caught the workboat on the beam, tipping her until the propeller thrashed at the surface and the boat hung there on the brink of a capsize, before a trough threw her in the right direction and she fell back upright.
Enough. George could do no more. If she couldn’t see them then they were way beyond anywhere she could follow. She waited for her moment to turn for home, watching for a gap in the growlers where she could spin the boat before it was swamped.
II: HARRY
The impact of the spar thumping into the deck was like being next to a field gun going off. Curled on the deck, Harry felt the jolt through his body, as if every timber in the boat had been given an electric shock. He rolled on his back, relieved the spar hadn’t hit him, and feeling the soaking cold as seawater slopping over the cockpit’s gratings rushed up his backbone, inside his fou
l-weather jacket. That shocked him into movement and he spun over onto his knees, slumping against the benches as the ship rolled.
The spar had struck between the cockpit and the boat’s side, hard enough for a crown of splintered decking to be sticking up around its embedded tip. Part of the sail was still stretched in a triangle between the main boom and the mast, but most of it was flapping furiously over the side, making even more noise than the storm. Lengths of line whipped about, threatening to blind them, and somewhere over their heads a pulley came free and fell, smashing through the skylight and into the cabin. That would have brained anyone underneath it. Jack seemed to be unhurt, but he’d thrown all his weight across the tiller. Another wave lifted them so the angled horizon beyond Jack became all sea and then all sky, and Harry felt the boat slew away from the wind and begin to tip, with the remaining rigging howling louder than the flapping sail.
‘Dad, I need you over here.’ Jack didn’t sound panicked. He was strangely calm, in fact, even though he needed to shout to be heard. Harry had a glimpse of Jack as he might have been in combat, with everything going to shit around him and his troops needing him to show them the way out.
But Harry couldn’t move. He stared at Jack, with his guts heaving, and threw up on his deck.
‘Dad, you need to help me steer.’
But Harry couldn’t give a damn about steering, he was too busy spewing.
‘I’ve got to get that sail down.’
It was a four-foot crawl to the tiller and it took Harry three waves to get there. Plus another puke.
‘Keep the wind on her quarter.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Harry hadn’t sworn so much since he was a squaddie.
‘The wind spun us round. Keep it over your left shoulder while I start the engine.’
Harry felt too bloody weak to do much, but he managed it while Jack went below. There wasn’t any subtlety involved, anyway. It was just a matter of pushing his whole body against the tiller. Even to a beginner, she felt sluggish, always wanting to go sideways on to the wind.
Cranking noises came from the chart-room. Harry thought Jack’s bellow of ‘Please, Scotty’ had an air of desperation about it. Jack kept heaving at the starter lever, which made rhythmic, mechanical noises while the next small mountain came up behind them and they climbed its foothills, all the way to the crest, where the wind caught them and the boat started to turn, rolling sideways. The clanking noises stopped and Jack appeared in the hatch.
‘Keep her straight,’ he bellowed up at Harry.
‘What the hell is “straight” in this mess?’
‘Can’t you feel the wind on your cheek?’
Yes, Harry could feel the wind on his cheek. Now they’d spun around he could feel it on the back of his neck. He could also feel one half of the English Channel soaking his backbone and the other half running down his legs.
‘Sod you, boy.’
Jack went back to try again, a three-wave, useless bloody rattle. When he climbed up the steps, there was a look on his face that told Harry they were in deep trouble. Jack paused for a moment as if gathering himself, and started hauling ropes out of a locker. He tied one end of each rope to a wooden post by the cockpit and threw them overboard, where they gradually streamed out behind them in the wake.
‘What you doing that for?’
‘Sea anchor. Stop us broaching.’
Harry had no idea what Jack was shouting about, but after he’d done that Harry didn’t have to fight the tiller so much. He looked back, and the ropes were stopping the waves falling over them. They were high and steep, the way a wave gets before it breaks on a beach, and foaming white, but under the dragging ropes they seemed flatter, less angry. Harry grinned for the first time.
‘Clever boy.’
Jack shouted into his ear. ‘We’ve got to get that sail down. It’s all drag and no push. I’m going forward. Keep her as steady as you can.’
It seemed like madness for Jack to climb out of the cockpit and crawl along the deck, head down. There wasn’t even a rail to speak of, just a little shin-high thing that wouldn’t have stopped a dog from being swept overboard. Jack worked his way forward on his knees, hand over hand along the ropes that went from the cockpit to the sails at the front end. He stopped where more ropes ran up the mast from a rack of brass pins bolted to the hull. The VHF squawked at them from down in the chart-room, but no way could Harry leave the tiller.
Harry was frightened for the boy. Waves would sometimes break over him, leaving him hanging on with the water streaming past his knees. Worst of all was when he found the rope he wanted and untied it, which took both hands, and a wave came inboard and swept his legs away so that he swung, dangling from the rope and bouncing over the deck. One leg went through the broken skylight, shredding his trousers as he swung back so that his false foot poked out clear and alien on the end of its strut.
Nothing happened, for all his efforts. The mainsail sagged a bit, but the other end of the upper spar was wedged into the deck by the cockpit, so the whole thing was stuck. Jack jerked at the line a few times, and maybe it was a good thing Harry couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Jack was still crawling back when Harry lost control. They were pushed to the side by one wave, and then further by another, like a swift left–right double punch in boxing, so that they were broadside on to the sea when a big one rolled over them and the cockpit filled with water. Harry couldn’t steer, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything but hold on after the water closed over his head. There were heavy thumps and rumbles around him as the sails and spars moved, as if he was locked in a washing machine with a pile of bricks. It was panic rather than sense that made him hang on rather than try to kick free, so that he was still in the cockpit when they broke the surface.
Jack was lying across the hatch, folded around a rope across his middle. He took one great gasp with his mouth wide open and rolled off the hatch into the cockpit. He sat there on the grating, looking up at the wreckage, with a look of agony on his face that Harry knew was for his beloved boat.
‘Shouldn’t we call for help?’
‘What for?’ Jack looked numb. ‘She’s sailing.’ He patted the woodwork by the hatch, and hauled himself to his feet. ‘That wave freed the mainsail.’ The sail lay in a flapping, crumpled mess along the deck. Great, sodden swathes of it were falling into the cockpit by Harry’s shoulder. Already the boat’s motion was easier.
Jack patted the hatch again. ‘Good girl! I knew she’d look after us. At least we’re pointing the right way.’
‘And how do we get home without that,’ Harry pushed an edge of the mainsail out of his face, ‘or the engine?’
‘I’m going to set the square sail. We can make it home on that and the jib.’
Jack tied two ropes to the tiller. ‘Lashing it,’ he said. ‘She’ll sail herself now.’ How the hell he could be so calm, Harry didn’t know. He could feel his fear turning to anger as he realised they probably weren’t going to die, so maybe it was a good thing Jack crawled forward again. Down in the chart-room the VHF was shouting again but Harry’s guts heaved and he ignored it. By the time Jack came back they had a big, square sail set like the ones Harry had seen in pictures of ships in olden times. The waves were still steep and angry, but they were going with them. Harry felt relieved, but soaked and ticked off, and as Jack dropped back into the cockpit his anger boiled over.
‘What the hell did you think you were playing at?’ Harry’s voice rose until he was almost screaming at him. ‘You nearly got us killed!’
Jack ignored him. He just stood by the hatchway wrinkling his nose. Harry was so wound up he could have hit him.
‘Petrol.’ Jack slid back the hatch and lowered his face to the gap. ‘ I smell petrol.’ He disappeared down into the cabin.
Harry felt suddenly lonely with just the sea and the wind. And it was a slashing wind, the kind that felt like it could strip the flesh from his face. Lonely and frightened. He had absolutely n
o idea of how to work this boat or how to get home if anything happened to Jack. The motion was easier, but Anfel Head was a menacing slab of grey in the rain and if the wind dropped for a moment he could hear the roar of the surf and its base. They’d lift, stern first, as each wave passed under them, and he could see a desolation of white-streaked grey in every direction.
Harry reached for his phone, only to find his pocket was full of water and the bloody thing was dead. He swore again, staring forwards past the wreckage of the mainsail to where the great square sail bellied, cracked in the wind and lifted. For a moment, Harry could have sworn he saw a pair of legs beneath the sail, standing astride the bowsprit.
‘Jack?’ Harry put his head into the hatch, and frowned. He had a bizarre idea that Jack had somehow made his way forward, but Jack was below, reaching back into the cramped space aft of the engine. Harry could smell petrol too. Jack squirmed backwards out of the space, sniffing his fingers. The look on his face made Harry forget what he might have seen on the foredeck.
‘The gaff hit right on the fuel tank.’ Jack looked so forlorn that Harry almost felt sorry for him. ‘There’s a split that’s dripping petrol into the bilges every time we roll.’
Poor kid. His precious boat was being trashed around him. But then Harry remembered that Jack was doing it to himself. And to Harry.
‘That’ll teach you to take stupid bloody risks.’
Jack’s head disappeared as the boat twisted to a wave, although one hand stayed gripping the rail by the steps. A drawer under the chart-table burst open, scattering pencils and compasses. A small, metal rectangle bounced on the deck and slid across towards Jack, who caught it with his spare hand as his head and shoulders swung back into view. Jack stared down at Old Eddie’s Zippo lighter as if he was surprised to find he was holding it.
Draca Page 29